Successful businesses focus on their customers’ needs, and then create products and services to match. You need to ask your customers what they want. Online tools can help you do this along with tracking customer behavior. Here are four tools you should be using.
Website Analytics
There’s all sorts of data you can gather about your customers through website analytics tools. This data can give you hints about your customers’ preferences. For instance, you can find out your most popular posts and then create other content that is closely related. Another thing you can look at is your bounce rate and customer traffic patterns.
Website analytics programs are typically easy to install on your website. Many people opt for Google Analytics because it’s readily available and has free basic features. However, it is by no means the only website analytics solution. Your website host may have other options available that are free to use and easy to install.
Social Media Analytics
Sometimes, simply looking at the comments you receive on your social media accounts can tell you a lot about what’s important to your customers. Additionally, you can learn what products and services are most popular by tracking your “likes” and “shares.” This will help you know where to make improvements to your business to better satisfy your customers’ needs.
There are all sorts of social media analytics tools that can give you clues about which strategies are successful. Some free software programs include Cyfe, Buffer, Quintly, and SumAll. Google Analytics also has a tab for social media data.
Customer Surveys
Surveys are another excellent way to find out what your customers want. Most customers don’t mind filling out short surveys if they get something in return or if you don’t ask them often to do surveys. For instance, if you offer your customers a discount on their next purchase for filling out your survey, they are a lot more likely to fill it out.
There are several programs you can use to create surveys for free on the Internet. Many people opt to use Survey Monkey. When creating your survey, keep it brief by targeting one or two questions you’d like answered. Yes or no questions are the best, but you can also ask for ratings, such as your customers’ satisfaction level or other easy questions that can be quantified.
Contact Forms
Another way to gather information about your customers so you know what they want is to have a contact form on your website. When customers have questions, they can use your contact form to start an email conversation with you. Contact forms give you a personal line of communication to your customers. Plus, you can save your customers’ email for future marketing use. Most website platforms have free contact forms that are easy to implement.
These tools will help you gain insight into your customers so you can meet their needs. It’s one of the most important concerns when you’re running a business. Happy customers mean repeat customers and free word-of-mouth advertising.
